…but there’s a very fundamental problem with such one-sided love affairs that never occurred to me before today: unless you’re in love with HAL 9000, there’s a real human voice actor somehow entangled in your sick crush.

I came to the conclusion somewhere around the end of season 1 of Arakawa Under the Bridge that I was, like, majorly in love with P-ko. I’d only seen two shows that I knew of at the time in which Chiaki Omigawa had played a prominent character, P-ko from Arakawa Under the Bridge being one of them and the other being what’s-her-face from Seitokai Yakuindomo. At that point, I didn’t see the conflict, since I don’t go for sporty-types; I mainly like klutzy-types.

But watching Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru forced me to realise a strikingly basic flaw in my thinking; how do I know whether I am in love with the klutzy characters or the voice itself? Or is it a combination of the two factors? I don’t like the idea of being in love with a voice. On the other hand, I don’t have any strong objections to being in love with a fictional character. As I said, that, at least, is perfectly normal.

In order for that to work though, I need to ignore the rather glaring coincidence that the two characters this season whose klutziness continues to prove irresistibly alluring are both played by none other than Chiaki Omigawa.

It’s troubling to think that the voice actor plays any part in this sad inequality, since for all I know, Chiaki Omigawa could be a cannibal, or even worse: not clumsy. To the viewer, she’s just a name and I don’t like the idea of being in love with a living actor.

Still, it’s hard to ignore the coincidence. Maybe she should play some unappealing class representative-type characters soon so that I can prove to myself that it’s the clumsy characters I like, not the actor(s) who play them.

Also, I hit 4.0MB/s upload speed briefly the other day. Fibre optics is great.